The Mystery of the Meantime

It's hard to know what to write about.  My daily experience repeats itself--I have no real sense of anticipation or direction.  I am just waiting.  And I can't even name the thing for which I'm waiting.  I mark days, noting how working days number themselves, melting into weekends, moving steadily towards the next season, holiday, bump or break in routine.  I am lost in the familiarity of it.  My life is this tick-tock progression.  And I wonder at God's plans for me.  Is this it?  Is there more?

So it's hard to write.  Usually the words flow from a deep place that has been kindled into Life, seeing a greater Meaning, and Opening, and Expansiveness that infuses my ordinary with something quite different--Other and Unknown.  And the Revelation thrills me, stirs up all kinds of joy within, making this living less daily, more amazing, each drop of life so unique and special and altogether Gift.

But something entirely different is happening now on the landscape of my soul.

Sheesh! This is hard. 

I'm watching my life tick away, each grain of sand floating through the narrow funnel of the present, so quickly becoming the past.  And I mourn the passage because I think I missed something somehow.  I want to be joyful and amazed again.  Joy and amazement escape me.

But the Faith part of me says there is value in the boredom of waiting.

Because the stretching out of this waiting time, this interim is really shaping something in me that cannot be shaped any other way.  In the innermost part of my character I am seeing those uglier parts of my being, that only come out when the more "spiritual" parts are not being entertained.  They come forth and show how far from Glory I really am.  The only reason Glory exists in my life is because Glory comes near.

My prayer has been, "O God, do so thoroughly what You have to do in me so that You only have to do it once."  Perhaps I shouldn't have prayed such a prayer.  Because the me I love most is lost in His thoroughness.  I wonder if I'll ever see her again. 

But the Faith part of me says there is a more substantial her coming.

The woman God is shaping in this meantime has more depth, more trust, more clarity, more knowing, more yieldedness, more real hope to share.  This peson God is shaping in me is less concerned about accomplishing and more concerned about getting out of the way of God's accomplishing.

I'm not there yet.  I'm not her yet. 

But this meantime refining is helping me to care less about what I do for God and more about just belonging to God.  It's who I am and nothing else matters.  I'm learning that.  The irony is that in the desperate boredom I'm learning more about God's Glory than any wonder He has ever shown me.  Because He absolutely will not bend to my will.  He is Holy.  Oh so Holy.  There is nothing to distract me from discovering how profoundly different I am from Him.

And this is the discovery in which I must rest, waiting for Him to lift me up.  Knowing He loves me.  Just as I am.  Imperfect. Waiting me.